Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
Not necessarily hate, but did not like as much as the rest of the internet: Oppenheimer
The moment I left the theater, I thought it should have been longer. Yes, I think an already 3hr film should be even longer. Just torture the audience at this point. But I thought that there was just so much stuff to cram into that 3hr length, there was not enough room for the story to breath, even if those stories were needed to paint a better picture of Oppenheimer’s life, morals, and conflicts.
I’d still recommend it to people. If anything, it’s still a visually well directed film. But if you aren’t a physics/history buff, you might not enjoy the story as much.
In my opinion, a better history based movie would be The Imitation Game. Much more focused story, even if some aren’t historically accurate.
If you know the actual story of Oppenheimer, you know the movie is garbage. It made it about this mostly fictitious investigation before Congress because of a pretty feud
It made it about this mostly fictitious investigation before Congress because of a pretty feud
Hmmmm
Was J. Robert Oppenheimer stripped of his security clearance due to his Communist ties?
Yes. The controversial Oppenheimer security hearing at the heart of both the movie and the book on which it is based took place in 1954 toward the end of McCarthyism, a campaign that targeted suspected Communists and Communist sympathizers. Oppenheimer’s hearing was conducted by the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
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I thought the nuclear explosion was pretty disappointing. It was hyped up so much and it’s just like, a normal explosion zoomed in. It didn’t look like a nuclear bomb went off to me.
Exactly this. You can’t hype up an audience to that degree and make them sit through 3 hours without showing them something theyve never seen before. And at this point you can’t just Nolan your way out by making the blast larger than life, because I think by now we possibly all imagine it bigger than it actually was. But what you can do is some sort of trippy shit where the blast goes on for ages, where it ripping things apart is shown in some sort of artistic and novel way, perhaps something emphasising an old world is being torn apart and this is a new nuclear age. ANYTHING. except a half hearted blast that looked and felt like half hearted CG. And the irony is the production team went out of their way to avoid using CG. It was just immensely unsatisfying and rushed and all the momentum of the film was lost. It just didn’t feel momentus enough.
If they’d been bolder they’ve have culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and shown the horror in some new terrifying light…
It was honestly the one time where I was like, ya, CG would have been better. Or restored footage or something. It also looked like they used the cotton technique like they do on models but I might be misremembering.
But what you can do is some sort of trippy shit where the blast goes on for ages, where it ripping things apart is shown in some sort of artistic and novel way, perhaps something emphasising an old world is being torn apart and this is a new nuclear age.
I don’t know if you’ve seen Twin Peaks, Season 3, ep 8, but if not… well, I think you’ll find it matches your description pretty well. Plus there are weird spooky Abraham Lincoln lookalikes covered in soot. And a performance from The Nine Inch Nails.
None of the above is made up.
Twin Peaks Season 3 was chaos. That episode was perfect for it. My wife and I did all three seasons in a row a couple or few years back, and the 20-something year gap gave David Lynch a whole lot of time to make the show bananas. The first two seasons had their oddity. Season three was on another planet.
It really was, and I loved every minute of it. Did you also watch Fire Walk With Me in your watch through? Wild stuff, although significantly less fun than much of the show, obviously. Brilliant though.
Yes, I think an already 3hr film should be even longer. Just torture the audience at this point.
Admittedly I haven’t watched it, but at this point wouldn’t it be a better idea to divide it into two parts?
It would, but it also probably would be a bad idea to do so. How many people would come back for a part 2 of a documentary film? I think not a lot.
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Agree completely
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For me, there was something about the number of A list actors in the cast. It just took me out of it. I was just thinking this is a movie, those are famous people acting.
I felt the same way about Dune 2 this past year. The film was incredible, but when every actor is a huge name known for something else. It just makes me hyper aware that casting exists, and then the suspension of disbeleif is shattered.
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Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.
Yeah, if OP thought the movie was heavy on the “good job being a teenager in the 80s!” content, they should steer well clear of the book.
RPO is bad, yes. But Spielberg is a good director and that’s why the movie is at least entertaining. I hate-read the book, but I still enjoy the movie.
Wasn’t it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
The thing that baffled me about that movie was how many “startups” used it as reference for what they were trying to create. Like, did I watch the same movie? Real life was so shitty they had entire blocks of people living in trailers mounted to each other vertically. They used the matrix or whatever it was called to escape. And you want to create that for real?
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Have you been around the car culture?
Agreed. That book was recommended to me by a few fellow sci-fi book fans, so I gave it a shot. Couldn’t get through it. It read like a 6th-grade kid’s fanfic about the 1980’s. Bad writing, bad dialogue, ham-fisted plot.
To be honest, isn’t it a ‘Young Adult’ book, i.e., intended for preteens/teens, not adults?
True, but it’s still poorly written. And so much of the content is GenX nostalgia, it’s obviously meant to be a crossover to those preteens’/teens’ parents.
Lets be real here, young adults (I.E toddlers and teenagers) aren’t exactly the most critical readers or familiar with judging literary quality. The writers of books targeted at young adults know this, and tend to not do more work than they have to on plot and world building. Go ahead and write me a five paragraph essay on the value that Warriors added to the medium. No child read warriors for the themes, they read it for the premise of anthropromorphic cat drama and as fuel for their first role-play world building sessions. YA novels are the literary version of comfort food, enjoyable for those that like the taste but you would be foolish for expect a fufilling rich plot with well thought out characters.
True! But I guess young adult readers don’t tend to be as discerning, which is why I never expect the writing to be any good.
Agreed. The movie is just a fun action film wirh no brainpower needed. If you go into it with no expectations it’s fine.
The book? The author insists on yanking you out of the story with listicles of callbacks and references to obscure ‘80s shows or whatever. The main character is just an ass, and is also conveniently capable of meeting every challenge thrown at him despite being an impoverished basement dweller. The book became a slog of contrivances to get from A to B with “Aren’t all these retro references cool?” jammed in at every opportunity.
The book is straight garbage. Probably the biggest Gary Stu ever. The movie is actually decent by comparison, because it removed a lot of cringe and toned down the main character.
Gary Stu? Is this the male version of a Mary Sue?
Yes.
I haven’t seen Ready Player 1, and now I have a reason not to see it.
You don’t disrespect Su-Per-Man.
Oh hell naw. If you mean that they made him go superweapon, that’s damn near legal cause to burn down a studio
Very weird take. Everyone I’ve ever talked to loves that book. I honestly cannot picture any conceivable reality where the movie was better than the book.
I’ll disagree having come in as a complete outsider to the demographic for that movie who only watched it because of the love it had. I was pretty damn impressed with the movie as an overall. The story, yea, you’re not wrong, it’s not absolutely worldbreaking of a message. But it’s one of those movies the work put in to it impressed me, in a time where CGI allows for cookie cutter movies to be made rapidly with green screens knowing the work behind it was fucking impressive to me. Also knowing how much they worked on the history of the IP, and getting the company to try to make a movie that called out its own product as problematic while celebrating it in an era where everyone is too timid and wants to make every movie palatable for everyone, or “family friendly” was ballsy as fuck and I’ll respect it.
But hey, I’m a cinema nerd who loves the weird lol, I respect your thoughts and you’re right, the baseline message didn’t say anything new to me.
I have a different exposure to feminist movies, so I guess I use that as a barometer. I think older movies with the same themes as Barbie were already highly successful in providing a nuanced commentary on gender power and equality in society, and the role of women, sometimes chosen and otherwise. So that’s Legally Blonde, Persepolis, Wild (w/ Reese Witherspoon), Mystic Pizza, Bridget Jones Diary, and Waitress and some others I am definitely forgetting.
Okay, I have a soft spot for Legally Blonde thanks to a civics teacher who said it did a better job in talking law than many procedural law movies. Now I wanna go watch it again, thanks for reminding me it’s out there!
I think frankly the thing that Barbie did that’s worldbreaking in the territory of these movies was not in the movie itself which is fascinating to me. I don’t have cable so dunno advertising there, but Oppenheimer coming out at the same time, no ads, just a few movie previews, the biggest ads were all the interviews with the cast. Barbie… could not get away from it, the ads were everywhere. So my thoughts were “okay, Mattel is definitely backing this.” Then I started hearing people talk about it and it was honestly surprising that Mattel was backing as well as it did, but okay, then when watching the movie that was the part that ended up shocking me.
I’m so used to executive meddling in movies, studios being cautious and companies being overprotective of their IPs that has ruined so many movies, that here was Mattel allowing themselves to be portrayed as definitely the bad guys, still their logo plastered all over VERY up front. I realize they got good advertising with the movie but I’m trying to remember another movie that the parent company backed while being made fun of this strong and the only one I can think of is Deadpool 3 and honestly that was easy because trying to tone it back would have lost fans, this had all the opportunity to not go over well.
It was an advertisement that people paid lots of money to watch. I don’t think you can expect more from it than that.
I’m giving you an upvote for the unpopular opinion I disagree with - which is what this comment section should be all about.
People are unable to use up and downvotes in any other way than to express their immediate emotion, unfortunately.
I think the interesting thing about the Barbie movie was its “IP” holder basically acknowledging that a lot of the current generation thinks its product is toxic.
There’s no such thing as bad PR.
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Yeah that was trash TV at its finest.
Borat.
Supposedly it’s a comedy, but it’s completely devoid of humor.
Listen lady…
Maybe you Used to be good on plow, before having such an opinion, but now your vagine is like sleeve of wizard.
I know this is the sequel, but remember when they filmed Rudy Giulani trying to have sex with a woman he thought was 14, put it on TV, and that didn’t warrant any investigation at all despite millions of people seeing the evidence?
Borat isn’t my favorite of the genre but I love those kinds of movies that mix fictional plot line with interactions of real strangers. I wish there was more love for those kinds of projects.
Borat (and SBC in general) is known for treating those real strangers like shit and leaving the places they film in worse off than when they got there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat check under controversies.
Tbf, some of the people in Borat deserved it. I laughed seeing Ted Cruz get punked
Giuliani scene was incredible in Borat 2
True, but as funny as tricking him into a To Catch A Predator like situation, then streaming it across America for all to see…
Is no one else concerned that the President at the time’s lawyer was filmed trying to have sex with someone he thought was 14, that millions of people saw the footage, and it didn’t lead to any investigation being launched? Or really anything at all?
I mean I am, but I’m not American so I think that’s expected. From my perspective it seems like a third of Americans get off on fascism and abusing power.
Yeah… The part where they tricked the town into thinking it was a real movie and gave them scripts reflecting as such, then just put the jokes the studio ACTUALLY wanted in the subtitles was really low of them to do. I don’t see how that’s at all removed from just doing “Kazakhstan: The Minstrel Show”
I will say I liked the movie a lot better before I knew that. When I first saw it I was a highschooler who had assumed Kazakhstan was a fictional place made to be a stand-in for Eastern European countries. Even when I learned it was a real place, I thought surely they just made a set or something.
Because only a monster would actually fly to a third world country, say you’re going to bring in a lot of money for a town that desprately needs it, pay them far less than they were promised, and blatantly lie and say that it’s a film about a guy going off on a big fantasy adventure instead of some white guy doing brown face to show how backwards and evil not only the town, but the nation as a whole is…
I’m not gonna downvote you because unpopular opinions is what this thread is about, but it’s just plain factually incorrect to say it’s devoid of humor. You may not personally find it funny, but there are a zillion jokes per second in this movie, and many people find it hilarious. It isn’t devoid of humor, it’s devoid of your type of humor
Yeah, I remember laughing out loud in the theater many, many times. But I was a 19-year-old dude in 2006, and was 20 when Superbad came out, and so that brand of humor hit me square in the funny bone.
That being said, comedy is very subjective, I’ll agree, but to call Borat unfunny is objectively wrong.
Scary Movie and Avengers. I know Scary Movie is a parody but it’s just to much parody for me tbh.
Comic book movies.
They have dominated the box office over the last 10-15 years, there are infinity reboots/origin stories, and all of them use the ”man, I really hope the bad guy doesn’t use the super heroes loved ones as hostages" as a plot point. All of them are so predictable.
The only good super hero movie is Mystery Men.
Unbreakable, The Incredibles, Chronicle, Logan, I may even defend Super.
Came to mention Unbreakable, and I can stand behind your list in general. Unbreakable came around right before or contemporaneous with the uprising of comic book movies, with Spiderman a la Tobey and X-Men with Tiny Jackman, versus the Huge Jackedman we know today. And this includes everything that came after them.
Unbreakable was a nice homage to the whole genre while being it’s own original story. And it came out at a time that I loved Bruce Willis (currently have a 14 year old cat named after him) and Shymalan had just wowed us, so it all just landed perfectly.
Unrelated to the thread here, but Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs was a solid, fun three-film run.
We fucking need a Flaming Carrot movie.
Oh boy, you don’t wanna see the actual comics then.
They’ve gotten so much worse over the years. It’s kinda hard being a Marvel fan. I used to be a huge Marvel Fangirl, and was happy that the movies were giving more obscure characters the spotlight. I was thrilled I lived in a world where the general public knew who Rocket Raccoon was.
But ya know then End Game came out and I was all “It’s been a wild ride, a shame it’s over, but all good things must come to an end!”
Then they kept making movies and, they’re just horrible. They’ve gotten formulaic, bland, and worse the comics aren’t even enjoyable anymore because they’ve become glorified adverts for the movies.
As much as people gave Morbius shit, I actually loved it because it felt like a breath of fresh-air. The characters weren’t just expies of Tony Stark (Seriously, they basically try to rewrite every character’s personality into Stark), they didn’t mug to the camera with stupid jokes about how, “This is a silly stupid movie and it sucks, but since I’m calling it out as being stupid and silly that means it’s good”, it took itself seriously, it felt like there were actual stakes, they were true to the character of Morbius instead of doing.,… gestures to MODOK in Ant-Man 3 whatever this is…
I avoid superhero comics (with a few exceptions like Watchmen) so sure as hell I was going to avoid the films
I hate Lord of the Rings. Well, I don’t hate it. I just don’t understand why people love it so much (not “why everyone loves it”, but “when one person loves it they love it more than anything else”). I don’t consider the story all that enjoyable, especially for the movies. I definitely don’t consider it rewatchable.
Like, I’m the target demographic. I was 16 when the first one came out. I played DnD and Magic the Gathering. Warcraft 2 was one of my favorite games. Mages and Orcs are something I’ve always had in my life since as long as I can remember. My parents read the Hobbit to me and I had read fellowship and two towers at some point around 11 or 12. But the movies? They just don’t connect with me. And I’ve never had anyone be able to put into words what it is that makes it click for them.
Yeah, same here. I tried to watch them several times and they never clicked
What did you think of the Warcraft movie?
Visually, I was impressed. As far as seeing the universe brought to life, it was good. As far as watching a movie goes though, it was kinda bad - the pacing was off, elements weren’t explained to the viewer, etc. I’d have a hard time recommending it to a person that doesn’t know anything about Warcraft and is looking for a good movie to watch.
I feel the exact same way. I loved the books when I was 15 but then the movies manage to be so incredibly dull somehow.
Joker
I thought it was pretentious, had no real story and pretty much just milked the gritty batman of the already not great nolan movies
not great nolan movies
Spicy.
The best part for me was the last act. The first two acts seemed like it dragged on for too long; I already understood well enough how sad and miserable Arthur’s life was. It already did more than enough to justify Arthur’s spiral into madness and anarchy, but it just kept layer it on and on.
When The Joker finally became The Joker, that was when I started to enjoy the movie.
I feel like Joker is one of those movies that needed to be on its own. It doesn’t feel like a Batman universe movie. It feels like a movie about some kind of mental illness that they slapped Batman related stuff on.
Yeah, but that’s why I like Joker
For me as a fan of both popcorn movies and psychological drama movies it was awsome. I never thought I’d get a crossover of such distant genres, that seemed wild, and therefore I enjoyed it very much.
I related to this movie/character on a personal level. I haven’t been able to fully explain why, maybe that’s the gist of it : it expresses struggles that I haven’t been able to put into words, yet I saw on film so eerily resembling mine
This is also one of the reasons I liked it. I knew exactly why it spoke to me, though. I was always very submissive in my life, unable to stand for myself. I was trying to change my approach when the movie came out. The scenes where he defends himself resonated with me deeply.
Interstellar. Slow, stupid and the ending. That fucking idiotic ending. I still regret the 3 hours of my life I lost to it.
I found it to be so unbelievable that I gave up pretty quickly. The narrative at the time was that the science of the film was so realistic and I saw so much that was factually incorrect that I couldn’t even focus on the film. I kept thinking, “that’s wrong”, pausing the film, getting out my phone to confirm it. I can’t remember any specifics any more, but it still bugs me when I see people saying that it’s scientifically sound
Personally I really enjoyed the world building. I’ve played enough Kerbal Space Program that I just assume any space movie/show is going to be factually wrong and just try to learn what the in-universe rules are and enjoy it
If you think Ernest Cline’s movie is cringy, wait until you read his poetry. Absolutely one of the worst piece of writing I’ve ever read.
And it only gets worse from there.
This is not a good poetry, but it’s a good enough feuilleton. He has a point.
Is the taboo topic the main problem?
Oh Jesus that’s a gruelling read.
Why did I read that whole thing? I could have stopped at any point, but I couldn’t look away, like a train wreck.
😂 exactly, morbid fascination
I have a friend who’s really into RP1, and it is taking an effort not to ruin their day with this
9h ago you wrote this. I’m replying now to repeat the temptation.
Its now been 10 hours. Still resisting?
😑👍
🙊
Hi again. How are you holding out?
Mortal Engines. I have not read the source materials.
Amazing concept, fantastic visuals, weak story, weak characters. Apparently just accidentally spliced in the end of Return of the Jedi instead of finishing the movie.
Kubrick’s version of The Shining. Most likely, I would feel differently had I not read the novel first, but the reduction of the story to a Nicholson-show pisses me off to the point where I cannot enjoy it for what it is. I’d rather endure the over four hours of less brilliant screenplay of the 1997 version.
Hackers. The reason why was at the time I was and had been a hacker for over a decade. A real one not some half assed pretty boi with issues. It sucks so bad. It was so fake.
As someone studying cybersecurity right now and hoping to pivot into red teaming, i would like to inform you that it’s since attained cult status. It’s so horribly bad that it’s actually good. The best way I’ve heard it described is that that movie is what a hacker (at the time) wished hacking was like. If i could really tap a few buttons and just say “I’m in” or hack the FBI just to fuck with random special agents, believe me I would.
The thing about that movie for me is I started out very young with a home built blue box connecting to computers and BBS’s all over the world. I war dialed most prefixes in my region. I did all kinds of things that were to put it plainly, stupid. I learned by reading 2600 magazine, radio and electronics and tons of documents available on those BBS’s that changed numbers frequently. By 1995 I was all over the net and it was like the wild west. At the time that movie came out it was worse than a joke. Also by that time I had a job where compromising computer networks was less profitable than being able to maintain them.
So you were in the position of those kids back in the day, except i take it there was significantly less sex, steeze, and roller blading
Deadpool.
I’m not sure if I absolutely hate it, but I definitely don’t get the hype—especially with Deadpool and Wolverine. There were some funny bits, but I feel like most of it is almost Family Guy-tier reference humor.
The plot feels as unimportant as ever—there are no real stakes or anything significant going on. It’s all about the “jokes,” fourth wall breaks (which get tiresome almost immediately), and Ready Player One-level “recognize the character” moments.
Maybe the last part is the biggest reason why I don’t connect with it. I’ve never really been into comics outside of film and television. But I feel like that shouldn’t be the main driving force for a movie anyway—or at least not for a good movie. Like, Ready Player One was fun, but not good.
